Hammer Gets a Pacemaker

Industrialist Dr. Armand Hammer, chairman of Occidental Petroleum, was hospitalized at UCLA Medical Center on Friday and underwent surgery for insertion of a cardiac pacemaker, a spokesman said.

“He is alert and talking, and his cardiologist, Dr. Jan Tillisch, expects him to be released from the hospital in a few days and to return to normal activities,” Occidental spokesman Frank Ashley said.

Within hours of the elective operation, the feisty Hammer granted a telephone interview from his hospital bed.

“I just got out of the operating room (and) had dinner,” said Hammer in a low, scratchy voice. “There is no question that it was not a heart attack.”

Hammer explained: “Recently, I had fallen and had some rib trouble. . . . The doctor recommended I have a pacemaker put in. He said I would function better and that the pacemaker would protect me from future problems.

“During the trouble with Watergate, people told me I was faking with my heart,” Hammer said. But nearly 20 years later, Hammer said there is finally some public evidence that “I have had problems with my heart.”

Hammer had pleaded guilty to making illegal campaign contributions to President Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 campaign, and after a decade-long quest, he was pardoned earlier this year by President Bush.

Hospital spokesman Richard Elbaum said the procedure that Hammer underwent was elective.

“He did not come in under an emergency situation,” Elbaum said.

A pacemaker regulates electrical activity in the heart so that it beats normally in a person who suffers abnormal heart rhythms.

According to a hospital source, Hammer had been in Hawaii where he had been involved in a marathon negotiation and had become exhausted.

Trading in Occidental stock was suspended Friday on the New York Stock Exchange with news of Hammer’s hospitalization. When he has been ill in the past, the price of the firm’s stock has surged, because the firm is considered a likely takeover target without Hammer.

The 91-year-old philanthropist is known worldwide for his collection of art, endowment of museums and tens of millions of dollars in contributions to charities and medical research.

In his long business career, spanning seven decades, he developed a remarkable relationship with the Soviet Union. Going to Russia at age 23, he made a deal with Lenin to supply surplus U.S. wheat. He has met every Soviet leader since.

Hammer, who was born in the Bronx, N.Y., and educated as a medical doctor, never entered practice. Instead, he took over his father’s faltering pharmaceutical business and made it a success.

He acquired Occidental Petroleum in 1956 and turned it into a conglomerate of fuel, chemicals and food with $20 billion a year in sales.

Staff writer Allan Parachini contributed to this article.